Mark Little joins Business Incubation Centre at NCI

The centre hosts 12 innovative start-ups that work in the areas of innovation in business, finance and technology. The centre is part of National College of Ireland’s commitment to developing stronger links between academia and industry.

It has been designed around the concept of building a ‘community of peers’, whereby businesses operating from the centre will benefit from shared knowledge, resources, equipment and the support of entrepreneurs, state agencies and the academic community.

Start-ups located at NCI Business Incubation Centre:

Storyful

Established by Little in January 2010 in response to the current transformation of journalistic reporting due to social media platforms, Storyful combines digital media and global journalism to deliver high quality online news. Storyful is a discovery network for people who want to tell or share authentic stories with meaning and value. It is run by a core team of professional journalists. Little has been a television news journalist for almost 20 years.

Altitude Fund Solutions

Altitude Fund Solutions was founded in early 2009 primarily as a software developer and consultancy provider to the fund management and fund administration industry. It was founded by Brian Redmond (technical director) and Keith Hazely (company secretary). Karl McCullagh recently joined the company as CEO. The key product is the Altitude Commission Manager. It has recently begun installation of the Altitude Commission Manager with its first client, a large Swiss fund manager with operations based in Dublin. Upon completion, the Altitude Commission Manager will also be available to their offices in London, Washington, Brussels, Prague, Zurich, Nicosia and Hong Kong.

Barracuda FX

Barracuda FX is a provider of financial markets software solutions. Barracuda’s Order Management concept was identified by its founders as a result of a significant market research, including several meetings with key decision makers in the banking community, over the past six months.

Calom Technologies

Calom Technologies develops consumer side solutions for watching TV and video-on-demand. Adrian Skehill is its CEO. Calom Technologies produces software that integrates internet media content, live TV streams and social networks, and delivers this using an online website optimised for television. This software is customised for telecommunications companies and internet service providers who wish to deliver a richer entertainment experience to their customers. Calom Technologies recently won in the Dublin Emerging Company category of this year’s InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Competition. The company was also nominated for the ISA’s Best Emerging Business Award 2009.

Channel Content

Dermot Rogers is the CEO of Channel Content, a company that provides learning and communications solutions that utilise the power and flexibility of web and mobile delivery. These solutions are created using a blend of digital technologies such as video, audio, multimedia and e-learning and produced primarily for sales, marketing and learning initiatives. Channel Content clients include Nokia, Vodafone, AIB, and the Irish Government, plus SMEs and higher-education clients.

ClipSure

Founded in May 2009 by Rory Ardagh, ClipSure is a provider of broadcast compliance services and production tools to the UK and European broadcast industry. The ClipSure software service allows broadcasters to outsource their compliance work and view the resulting TV channel recordings online. ClipSure has developed a SaaS (software as a service)-based broadcast compliance offering that saves broadcasters time and money. Enterprise Ireland and a leading venture capital fund back the company.

Get It Keep it

Get It Keep It is a free online service that allows users to gather all their utility bills in one place and help analyse, organise and retain them securely. The service aims to revolutionise the way people gain control over their utility bills and other important documents. Alan Coleman and Jim Hannon established the company in 2007, after leaving senior roles in Accenture and RTÉ respectively. They have spent the last three years developing their patent-pending platform. The company has attracted a high-profile advisory board featuring senior executives such as Colm Long, Facebook online operations director EMEA, and Ian Rosarius, CIO of British Telecom Wholesale. Get It Keep It also receives support from Enterprise Ireland and was a winner of Eircom’s Web Innovation Fund in 2009.

InnerWorkings

InnerWorkings was founded in 2002 by a management team with more than 100 years’ combined experience in the technology-based learning industry. Its CEO, Francis McKeagney, has more than 15 years’ experience at executive level of the learning industry. InnerWorkings aims to help software organisations move to a new level of effectiveness by improving developer skills and increasing management insight, thus reducing development costs and schedule delays and ultimately, improving profitability and customer satisfaction. InnerWorkings’ headquarters are in San Francisco, and its R&D centre is based in the Business Incubation Centre in Dublin. Clients include Wells Fargo, Comcast, Intel and Spheric Technologies.

Lucey Technology

Founded by Ian Lucey and Joe Healy, Lucey Technology uses Web 2.0 technology to provide offerings to professional services firms such as accountants and solicitors. Lucey and Healy founded the company with the aim of making technology easy to use and easy to adapt to, so that all of their solutions integrate with the customer’s existing websites and software. Lucey Technology reached the final of the Dublin Emerging Company Category at the 2009 InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Competition.

Openplain

Openplain is a workplace analytics software company which was set up in 2008 by technologist Jon Mulligan, with the support of Enterprise Ireland and AIB’s Seed Capital Fund. Openplain is an online service that helps organisations improve productivity by automatically tracking time that employees spend on projects, applications, documents, websites, etc. The company has won many awards, including the Docklands Innovation Park Enterprise award and the InterTradeIreland Top Emerging company award.

Staff Balance

Established in December 2008 by Ciaran McGowan, Staff Balance is one of Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential IT companies. It helps organisations to determine their optimum staffing levels by building a model of how staff spend their time and at what cost. Staff Balance has already saved its blue-chip clients more than €900,000. The company is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland and has already won the Special Merit Award in the M50 programme. 

WebStrong

Founded in 2008 by MD Iarfhlaith Kelly, WebStrong specialises in the development of web applications for business as well as building and releasing niche web-based products. WebStrong’s flagship product is Footprint, a collaboration tool for designers to enable them to communicate with their clients more efficiently. Other products in the WebStrong portfolio include Twission, a social-add on tool that improves the relativity of your Twitter search results and Short.ie, a URL shortening tool, designed in partnership with Dublin-based web development company Echolibre. WebStrong won the Web Developer Excellence Award at the 2009 Net Visionary Awards for its Twission application. Its most prominent web app, Short.ie, was also shortlisted for the Realex Irish Web Awards.

National College of Ireland will also host the next Open Coffee Dublin event, which takes place at the NCI Restaurant on Thursday, 6 May 2010. To register your interest, visit the Open Coffee Dublin blog.